Over the next year the Army will evaluate soft recoil gun technology on light combat vehicles starting with a pair of HUMVEES. Soft recoil could not only make it possible to fit vehicles with up to 155mm guns, but make light artillery more survivable in the bargain.
It has taken the Army more than 20 years to get back to providing light tank capability to its Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs). These tanks will be more lethal, easier to maintain, and able to keep up with an IBCT’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle transports. They’ll need to be air transportable via C-17 cargo aircraft, ready to fight upon landing, and capable of learning new combat tricks as they age.
After cutting through a number of proposals, only two prototypes remain, one from General Dynamics Land Systems (GD) and another from BAE Systems (BAE). The service eventually wants 504 of these new tanks; an initial 26 will begin production in 2022 after a head-to-head soldier evaluation helps determine a winner.
By
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on December 15, 2020 at 6:26 PM
BAE Systems’s prototype for the Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) light tank.
WASHINGTON: The pandemic has disrupted a second BAE Systems armored vehicle program, this time delaying deliveries of prototype Mobile Protected Firepower vehicles to the Army’s 18
th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg.
Earlier this year, problems with COVID and quality control at BAE’s York, Penn. factory delayed delivery of BAE’s Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle – the replacement for the vulnerable, Vietnam-vintage M113 – by several months. Now I’ve learned that COVID has also affected production of the MPF, an air-deployable light-tank, whose prototypes are being built at a BAE facility in Sterling Heights, Mich.
“The MPF brings a new level of lethality to our infantry forces. The SVA gives us the first opportunity to put these vehicles in the hands of our soldiers with the 82nd Airborne and begin to develop the methods by which our forces can best employ,” them, said Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, the Army’s director for the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross Functional Team.
The Army wanted to integrate existing technologies into the vehicles and avoid the kind of development that would lengthen the program schedule. The priority has always been to field this new critical capability soonest but it also will be able to accommodate additional weight and spare electrical power to support future growth, Army officials said.